“The most important aspect of my photographic work is surprise. For almost 40 years, I have constantly been surprised by India.”

The elegance of Derry Moore’s eye transpires in his Evening Ragas, which will be shown in Kolkata in August*, as part of an itinerant exhibition throughout the country. The Indian work of this renowned portrait and interiors photographer primarily evokes nostalgia: the nostalgia of a traveller witnessing the evolution and transformation of India, gazing at the architectural beauty of cities and at the lives populating these timeless spaces.

However, showcasing this exhibition in the capital of West Bengal makes perfect sense. Kolkata is in fact unique, insofar as it bears a beautiful and complex tension, between outbursts of relentless spiritual energy and the calm of certain architectural havens, set amidst the bustling city. This fleeting tranquillity is associated to a poetic sense of decadence, of which Derry Moore captures the beauty, as if he were documenting a moment in time and a place condemned to disappear. Grasping this daunting beauty is the defining experience of a traveller in Kolkata. Indeed, in Moore’s photography, the Marble Palace becomes this ravishing display of interior decorations surrounded by decaying walls. As the owners of the palace elegantly lounge in one of the rooms, we cannot help but see the resemblance with Roy, the Bengali landlord of Satyajit Ray’s Music Room (1958), who lounges in his estate while the world around him changes dramatically.

The reference to Satyajit Ray’s work is one Derry Moore makes his own, as the photographer faces in awe this unsettling and paradoxical aspect of Bengal’s identity: as we gaze at the timelessness of the spaces and structures, we are also struck by an uneasy sense of imminent extinction, and at times of death, as if life was expiring from that interior space. “I am documenting the end of a period in India”, Derry Moore tells us, “and it is very poignant, just like in one of Anton Chekov’s stories.” His photographs are indeed melancholic evening ragas, the Vedic musical scales. Therefore, we observe in the photographer’s eye a form of sacred reverence and respect towards the moment he is capturing, in the midst of India’s dynamic evolutions and transformations. Because of this form of reverence, Derry Moore’s photographs seem to almost invite us out of the places he is showing us, or at least urging us to tread lightly on these ancestral floors, and to whisper as we pass through.

A palace in Murshidabad – “a city I long to visit whenever I am in the region”, claims Derry Moore – takes on the role of an urban oasis, abandoned by time, yet open to the traveller as a safe haven.

Before it is too late.

“The Photograph then becomes a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time. A temporal hallucination, so to speak.”

About Kamalan Travels

Kamalan is a high-end travel company, specialized in custom made journeys to India. We believe in travel as a means of intellectual enrichment, and are willing to go all the way in order to satisfy a client’s request, no matter how challenging.

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